Another Norse word in Kent is Ness or Naze, a nose or promontory, such as Dungeness, Shoeburyness, Pepperness, Foulness, Shellness, Sheerness, Sharpness Cliff at Dover, whence criminals were hurled, Whiteness, Foreness, Bartlett Ness and Oakham Ness. The Nore, in Kent, is the Norse, or perhaps Jutish, Nôr, a bay with a narrow entrance, and the word is unique in Britain, unless we may find it also in Normarsh, near Rainham. Again attributable to our invaders, and again purely coastal, are the places ending in _fliot_, a small river or creek, such as Northfleet, Southfleet, Ebbsfleet, with Purfleet on the opposite bank of the Thames. Thanet and Sheppey were for us their chief points of attack and their naval stations, while the Danelagh or Kingdom whence the Norse element predominated had the Wash as the chief entrance whence they radiated out. The suffix “gate” may be either from the Saxon geat or the Scandinavian gata, but when we find Ramsgate, Dargate, Margate, Westgate, Kingsgate, Snargate, and Sandgate, all on the coast, while in Romney Marsh “gut” takes the place of “gate,” as in Jervis Kut, Clobesden Gut, and Denge Marsh Gut, we may incline to a Scandinavian origin. It is in the north, and the north only according to the best authorities, that the suffix ing represents the Norse _eng_ for grass-land. The Islands of Kent. Most islands are attached portions of the nearest mainland, severed in prehistoric times by subsidence of the intervening soil and the action of strong currents. Thus even England is a portion of the Continent, as its fauna and flora proclaim, while Ireland was severed earlier still. Thus also the Isle of Wight is Hampshire. So our Kentish islands, now only two and neither now to be effectually circumnavigated, are practically absorbed in the mainland. “Sheppey, Thanet—what else?” most would say. Yet the early geographer Nennius, writing in the eighth century, has the following quaint passage:—“The first marvel is the Lommon Marsh” (_i.e._, Limen, now Romney), “for in it are 340 islands with men and women living on them. It is girt by 340 rocks, and in every rock is an eagle’s nest, and 340 rivers run into it, and there goes out of it into the sea but one river, which is called the Lemn.” Truly a picturesque account of the numerous spots, where dry land first appeared in the shallow bay, and the countless sluices which intersected them.